Microsoft Ends Support for Vista

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is finally burning the bridge to perhaps its least liked operating system (OS), Windows Vista. In a report on Monday, Microsoft announced that it would no longer support the OS and that users will have to move to a more recent version of Windows.

When the OS originally arrived, Microsoft was performing at its worst, and critical reviews of the system only made things worse. Some might say that the company lost sight of its customers and missed an opportunity to further capitalize on its Windows monopoly. Since it debuted in 2006, competitors in the PC market like Apple have absolutely exploded, although this might not entirely be related.

Users have complained about the OS that it is slow, or doesn’t load properly. Ultimately computers are supposed to be able to run their OS, but this was not the case for Vista. Apple had similar troubles when it originally debuted its Unix OS in the early 2000s, but it made a strong recovery.

It didn’t help that users also did not want to “upgrade” their OS when Vista was released. Further competition from Apple exacerbated the situation and allowed the iPhone giant to gain even more market share versus the Windows platform.

Microsoft finally moved on from Vista in 2009 when it released Windows 7, which was significantly better than the Vista platform. The company saw a spike in sales almost overnight.

Now Microsoft is saying goodbye to Vista. Although many think this should have happened sooner, this is a welcomed event for many Windows users.

Shares of Microsoft were last seen down 0.9% at $64.95 on Tuesday, with a consensus analyst price target of $69.42 and a 52-week trading range of $48.04 to $66.35.